Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to discover, develop and foster commercialization of new bioactive products as new pharmaceuticals or agrichemicals, and to identify, characterize and develop plants for production of pharmaceuticals or pesticides as potential alternative crops.

Approach:
(1) Development of strategies for rational collection of terrestrial, aquatic and marine plants, as well as microbes, as a source of novel bioactive natural products. (2) Discovery and development of novel pharmaceutically or agriculturally useful natural products from higher plants (3) Identification and investigation of new mechanistic targets that may be used in the discovery of pesticides and anti-infective and anti-cancer agents. (4) Development of methods and technologies to authenticate, pharmacologically characterize, and chemically analyze higher plants as sources of pharmaceuticals or botanical supplements. (5) Investigations of selections, cloning, propagation, agronomics, cultivation, harvesting and processing of medicinal plants in relation to the chemistry of desired pharmaceutically or agriculturally useful natural products.